To start, I think it’s important that we situate this conversation within a particular moment in history. To understand where we are today—in our newsrooms, in our societies—we have to locate ourselves historically. I remember being struck, maybe six years ago, by how much that November 9 moment—the fall of the Berlin Wall—shaped what came after. That moment ushered in what we now understand as the triumphalist American era. Reading Karl Marx suddenly became unfashionable. Wearing Reebok was good. We were watching Michael Jordan and not so much Stalin anymore. That was the ideological climate that framed the world we were stepping into.

Here in East Africa—and I’ll speak specifically about Kenya, since that’s my context—that liberal democratic dispensation coming out of America was met with a lot of joy. At the time, Kenya was facing an economic recession and grappling with the effects of structural adjustment programs signed in the 1980s. These programs were very similar to what we’re experiencing now, just under different names. Today we call it austerity, or debt-driven austerity, but the material consequences are largely the same—cuts to health, education, public services.

We were also living under an authoritarian regime at the time, under President Daniel arap Moi. And in a strange way, there are echoes of that moment in the present. His political disciple, if you like, is now president. So again, we’re seeing this uncomfortable familiarity—similar economic measures, similar political styles.

But what was really interesting then—and remains relevant now—was the youth, particularly the university population, and the energy they brought. Back then, we had a program called JAB: students were sponsored by the government and received a fair bit of financial support. That allowed people to spend time thinking, organizing, becoming leftist, becoming radical. There was space for that. But all of that changed when the graduate programs were restructured, and the space for political formation shrunk.

So then the question became: What do we do with all these young people coming out of university? The Kenyan state had no answer. Political elites and policy makers were caught flat-footed. What emerged in that vacuum was a kind of black market—an ideological one. Civil society as we know it today began to take shape during that moment, particularly in the 1990s. It was donor-driven, Western-funded, and heavily invested in pushing liberal democratic ideals and values.

But because of the conditions of Kenyan society at the time, this was a welcome intervention. You had people like Smith Hempstone, the US ambassador, actively championing these reforms. And you had local forces—religious leaders like Reverend Timothy Njoya—declaring that Kenya was ready for democracy. So there was this convergence of local and international actors, and for a while, it felt like a productive marriage.

In those days, it was cool to be in civil society. It was cool to be an anticorruption crusader. You had the backing of the West. You had funding. You had legitimacy. You were aligned with what was being sold as the American dream on a global scale.

So we went down that path—and we went deep. For a moment there, it felt like we had reached what they called “the end of history.” Everything was supposedly settled. All that remained was to apply technical fixes to our political problems. No need for ideological debate. No need for philosophical reflection on the moment. Just patchwork solutions.

If elections weren’t working, it wasn’t a political problem—it was a technical one. Was the issue at the ballot box? Was it the final tally? Was it the polling station or the national tallying center? Either way, the solution was to go to court, not to the people.

Now, the Makau Mutua ruling made it clear: The polling station is the final verdict. That became our rhythm, our dance. Even after we pushed out Moi, we kept moving in that groove—technical fixes. Authoritarianism was bad, democracy was good. We removed Moi. Then Kibaki came into power in 2002, and we continued with the liberal democratic agenda.

For our generation—those of us who had come of age agitating for change—it was a great time. Civil society was thriving. It was an intellectual space, full of energy, full of ideas, backed by Western donors and animated by this sense of political possibility. The liberal democratic model was ascendant. It felt like a good time to be alive. When Kibaki was elected, there was euphoria again. That moment meant something to us. People like the late Binyavanga Wainaina—very much a part of our generation—captured the mood. His essay “How to Write About Africa” wasn’t just a literary intervention; it was a kind of cultural valve. We loved it. Kwani? was launched. The literary scene was buzzing, expanding, coming into its own. We were living through a moment.

And in that moment, we contested narratives—like the idea that Africa is a country. That critique became its own cultural and political current, and you can see its traces even here, in the name of this publication. That was the energy of the 2000s. We were asserting ourselves intellectually, creatively, politically. Even when the 2007 post-election violence broke out, it felt like a tragic interruption—but still a blip in our broader liberal democratic trajectory. A dark cloud, yes, but in what we believed was otherwise a rainy paradise. And so in 2010, partly in response to that violence, we doubled down and passed a new constitution. It was a historic achievement. Things kept moving.

But history doesn’t move in a straight line—it rhymes. In 2013, something ruptured. Two ICC suspects—former President Uhuru Kenyatta and the current President William Ruto—teamed up and ran a highly effective campaign. They won. And suddenly, it felt like our entire liberal democratic project was under threat. By 2014, 2015, many of us who had spent our twenties and thirties fighting for these gains began to feel disillusioned. We saw signs of democratic backsliding. Civil society was no longer celebrated—it was under attack. The state began calling it “evil society.” There was institutional blowback, especially in health reform and devolution. A counterreform agenda was taking shape.

So what did we do? We started to gather. Small groups, late-night coffees, long conversations. The progressive wing of our generation—people who still believed—began asking what was next. And in 2016, The Elephant was born. It emerged as a platform for dialogue, for speaking truth to power, for responding to the emergencies we were witnessing in society. The civic space was shrinking fast, and we knew we needed to build something—to keep thinking, keep speaking, keep imagining.

You know, people like Denis Galava, Gado, and many other columnists and editorialists in Kenya’s newsrooms were being let go. I won’t say “fired” because firing suggests some HR problem—and this wasn’t that. There were no HR issues. These were political decisions. Many of the calls came from state operatives who felt the editorials were going too far, or that the cartoons were too pointed. So they were let go. Interestingly, one of the ways this happened was through scholarships. You’d be offered a scholarship to the UK—go study, broaden your horizons—and when you came back, your job would be gone. It was a soft kind of exit. The Peter Principle talks about promoting people to the level of their incompetence, but in this case, it was about giving people a kind of graceful exit while quietly removing them from the scene.

Those were exciting early days, not just for The Elephant but for Kenya’s public sphere. The platform helped spark an environment of critical reflection, encouraging us to rethink our society. And in those early years, there was real momentum. We were writing about ourselves, to ourselves. In the spirit of Steve Biko, we wrote what we wanted. It was an exhilarating time. The public sphere in Kenya felt alive. But again—history doesn’t move in a straight line.

With COVID, things shifted. But interestingly, the public sphere had already been stirred up—not only by The Elephant, but by platforms like Africa Is a Country, Debunk Media, Africa Uncensored, Baraza Media, and others. Through them, narratives that had been tightly held by the state began to unravel. Not just unravel—they were falsified, exposed.

By the time we reached 2020, COVID was in full swing. The political elite began to realize that the narrative tools they had once used to manipulate voters—to capture power—were no longer working. Already, by 2018, Kenya had signed its first IMF discretionary loan. Austerity was underway. The cost of living was high. And the stories that used to hold things together no longer had traction.

As Angela Borah writes in her book Digital Democracy and Politics, new forms of political socialization were taking place—digitally. Through Twitter [now X], through Facebook, through WhatsApp, even the dark web. The internet was becoming the new public square, and people were reconstructing their political consciousness in real time.

President William Ruto understood this. He saw that the old elite narratives—tribalism, parochialism—no longer held the same weight. He realized that if he was going to appeal to a younger demographic—people increasingly socialized through digital platforms—he’d have to change tactics. And so he did. He launched a campaign framed around the “hustler versus dynasty” narrative. It was slick on the surface—a PR masterclass—but hollow in substance. Still, it worked. Like most campaigns today, it wasn’t about ideology; it was about branding. And it resonated, especially with the youth.

The youth turned out in large numbers and voted for him. The margin was thin, but it revealed something important: A shift was happening in Kenya’s politics. And that shift was made possible, in part, by the kind of work that platforms like The Elephant had been doing since 2016—disrupting dominant narratives, expanding the public imagination.

But it was also a hard moment for many of us—especially progressives in our generation. We found ourselves asking: What was this liberal democratic experiment for? What was the point of all those years—30, 35 years—of advocacy, sacrifice, political organizing, if we ended up here? With a president who had once been part of YKAN, a political vehicle used by Moi to mobilize youth against the very reforms we had been fighting for?

It was disillusioning. Truly. I remember writing a piece at the time for The Elephant, where I said: If you’re hearing an eerie silence coming from Kenya, it’s because we’re all in disbelief. What just happened? And what is Kenya now? One writer even described it as a Christocracy—a fusion of church and state, a spiritualized form of political authority.

So from 2022, we entered a kind of stalemate. But then something remarkable happened. The younger generation—ironically, the children of those who had begun this struggle—took to the streets. The Gen Z protests. They began to agitate for the completion of what their parents had started. They demanded real constitutionalism, real reforms—especially around the police, the economy, and the full implementation of the 2010 constitution. They revived conversations about sovereignty—about debt, about the IMF, the World Bank, and Chinese loans. They were asking hard questions, not just of the state but of the entire global financial architecture.

So that’s been the conversation pushed by this generation—the generation that fought for liberal democracy, built civil society, and tried to create an open public sphere. And now, we find ourselves in a kind of revolutionary moment. We don’t quite know where we’re going, but we do know where we’re not going. It’s an in-between space. To borrow from Gramsci: “The old world is dying, and the new cannot be born; now is the time of monsters.” That’s where we are—in the age of monsters. We know what came before, we sense what’s emerging, but for now, we’re trapped in this interregnum.

Kenya today is in a revolutionary moment. We’ve been here before. There are multiple possible pathways out—but we’re not articulating them clearly or forcefully. In past moments, you had groups trying to imagine something more radical—there were self-styled Bolshevik aspirations, even a flirtation with oligarchic formations. But those efforts, too, were captured. Over the last several years, we’ve seen the same dynamic: ambitious efforts cut short, redirected, absorbed.

Now, we’re seeing the Gen Z generation come of age. And they’re arriving with a kind of fervor that feels reminiscent of the French Revolution. They’re pushing for a new social contract. They want to renegotiate the terms of citizenship, of sovereignty, of economic justice. But standing in their way is an older guard—watching closely and trying to stall or dilute the revolution. That feels more like 1848 in Germany: capture the revolutionary impulse and channel it into reforms that serve the status quo.

That’s the scenario we’re in—two forces pulling in opposite directions. And it’s not just about the youth. It’s also about our newsrooms. We’re in a hard place, not just in Kenya, but globally. Civic space is shrinking. Journalists are being intimidated, even abducted. Technological shifts are upending traditional journalism, while donor interest is shifting elsewhere. There are fewer Western allies. And yet, Gen Z is mobilizing—without the external support their parents’ generation had. They’re doing it on their own.

So I want to end with one last reflection. I’ve been thinking about a story from the Christian tradition—about the rabbi Jesus of Nazareth. There’s a moment where he sends out his disciples and tells them to go cast out demons. They come back and say, “We tried, but nothing happened.” And Jesus says to them, “Some of these things only go out through prayer and fasting.”

That story came to mind when I thought about this age of monsters. Theologically, monsters are demons. They occupy territory. They resist eviction. So I began wondering what it might mean to approach our work—especially as journalists and editors—with that in mind. What does prayer and fasting look like in a newsroom?

I’m not saying we need deliverance services at editorial meetings. But if we think about prayer as a form of deep meditation—then maybe we need more of that. Maybe we need to cultivate spaces of silence, of reflection, of intentional thinking. In the noise of the age of monsters, we have to be able to focus on the light. And maybe our newsrooms can be spaces where that happens—not just places of reaction but of contemplation.

And fasting? I’m not saying we skip meals—journalists need to eat! But I do mean fasting as a metaphor: a process of purging, of shedding unnecessary baggage. We are being called to something. Kenya is being called. Africa is being called. The world is being called. And we’ve never been here before. We are confronting multipolarity, shifting hegemonies, wars, famines, droughts, counterrevolutions, counterreforms—all of it at once. So how do we fast? How do we strip away the gunk, so we can be sojourners toward a better, more just world?

Friends, with those few thoughts, I’ll leave you with a line from the great American poet and writer Teju Cole: “We must learn how to sit in the dark together.” And I think that’s our task now. In these particularly grim times, we must learn how to sit in the dark together.

I’ve noticed something interesting: At the same time as austerity measures have intensified and new loans have been signed, there’s also been a surge in capital investment—particularly from foreign companies, especially in infrastructure. So my question is: What is the opportunity here? Or more precisely, what is the demand being made in response to this investment?

It made me think of Zohran Mamdani. He’s currently running for mayor of New York, and one of his proposals is to extract taxes from the foreign capital that has taken over the city—from multinationals, from real estate—and redirect those resources to dismantle the austerity regime that became even more brutal during COVID. His message is basically: It’s time for capital to pay its dues.

He’s doing surprisingly well. We don’t know if he’s going to win, but he’s polling in the top two. And it made me wonder: Is there a similar demand from Gen Z in Kenya? Is there a version of that—of calling capital to account—for this moment? Can Gen Z articulate a demand that capital repay its debt to society?

That’s a very good question—and I think, crucially, it’s a question no one is really asking here. Too often, Gen Z is dismissed as a badly behaved generation. You hear it everywhere: They’re spoiled, they’re unruly, they were raised without discipline. That’s the dominant frame. But if you really listen to what they’re saying, something much deeper is happening.

Gen Z is asking for a new social contract with the state. Their parents’ generation—the one I belong to—pushed for a legal contract. That’s what the 2010 constitution represented: a legal instrument meant to act as a stopgap, a way to hold elites in check when they overreached. It was a defensive move.

But what Gen Z is demanding now is more philosophical. They don’t want the social contract to just be a set of clauses in a document. They want it to be lived. They want it to shape their everyday reality. And that includes things like police reform—something we’ve talked about for years but never truly implemented. We had a Truth, Justice and Reconciliation Commission. Its report is gathering dust in Parliament. The findings are there, but there’s been no political will to act on them. So Gen Z is saying: We don’t just want commissions, we want transformation.

And here’s the deeper critique—they’re also asking why the state behaves the way it does. Why, even when you push the state, does it revert to the same old habits—especially around capital? And that leads to something even more radical: They’re pushing not just for reform of the state but of the entire ecosystem around it.

Because the state doesn’t operate in a vacuum. It’s embedded in networks of power. It has tentacles in the media. In civil society. In the private sector. Even in the church. What Gen Z is demanding is a full-scale overhaul of those institutions as well. They’re saying: The Constitution wasn’t just for the state—it was a social vision. And if we’re going to realize that vision, all these sectors need to transform too.

Right, and the state actually has the power to act on capital. But it lacks the will.

Exactly. And beyond that, there was this assumption that once we had the Constitution, other actors—civil society, the church, the media—would naturally absorb its spirit. That they would evolve alongside the state. But they haven’t.

What Gen Z is now saying—through their actions and their words—is that reform must be total. Civil society must be reformed. The media must be reformed. The church must be reformed. Only then can we fully unlock what the Constitution promised: dignity, justice, and equality for every Kenyan.

In Algeria, we had a similar movement in 2019. It’s been six years now, and still—we’re not fully beyond the old world, but we’re also not in the new one. We’re still stuck with the monsters. And one of the things we noticed, as journalists, was how social media played a huge role early on. It helped convey real sentiment, show real images from the street, offer an alternative to state media.

But the state is resilient. It found ways to muddy the waters—troll accounts, bot farms, co-opted journalists who began to toe the state line, shifting the narrative. I’m curious—what’s the experience been like in Kenya? Are you dealing with similar tactics? And how do you combat that?

Yeah, absolutely. Just recently, a prominent politician said something quite bizarre—she declared that we need to “pray the spirit of social media out of Kenya.” She used theological language, full-on Christian deliverance rhetoric, as though social media were some kind of demonic force corrupting the youth.

Social media here has gone through different phases. The state is increasingly trying to muzzle it, but it’s difficult—because the internet is now intertwined with our financial systems. You can’t just shut it down without serious consequences. Particularly after the Gen Z revolt last year—on June 25—the state turned to more familiar authoritarian tactics: abductions, intimidation, and the co-optation of visible protest figures. People were offered money, opportunities, positions. The usual state playbook.

Another thing that’s unique in Kenya is the role of language—especially moralistic language—in how the state talks about protest. Kenya is a deeply religious society, and the state uses that to frame the protests in moral terms. Protesters are described as delinquents, misguided children who just need to be corrected, disciplined, brought back into line. The aim is to delegitimize them—not by engaging their ideas, but by casting them as morally lost.

Has it worked? Not really. Because this is the first generation in Kenya that’s philosophically oriented. And unless you engage them on a philosophical level—unless you answer their actual questions—you can’t resolve the tension. That’s what makes this moment so distinct.

Our political elites aren’t capable of that kind of engagement. They’re too steeped in old, parochial forms of thinking. They treat the protests as a bottle-throwing nuisance, assuming it’ll blow over. But you can’t resolve a philosophical crisis with force—or with job offers. And here’s the other thing: We’re in a recession. If the economy were booming, you might be able to co-opt a few people. But when you’re in a recession and a philosophical moment, the old tricks don’t work.

You have to answer both questions at once. And ironically, if you answered the philosophical question properly, you’d probably find a path toward answering the economic one. But our elites are unwilling—and frankly, unable—to do either. That’s why we’re in this cul-de-sac. That’s why, two days from now, we’re back on the streets. Because the questions haven’t been answered.

Joe, you mentioned that old scholarship program—JAB, I think—which supported student radicals in the ’80s and ’90s. That made me think about student unionism more broadly, and other kinds of associational formations—especially those not dependent on foreign funding. Historically, across a lot of third-wave democracies in Africa, we’ve seen how these kinds of groups often get absorbed into the political settlement over time.

But I’m curious—are there still remnants of that earlier radicalism? And if so, are they in conversation with Gen Z? Or are they disconnected? If they’re not in conversation, then what happened to those old associational forms and the people who carried them?

Yes, there are always remnants of past radicalism. But as Dr. Ouma Okwonga has written—better than I ever could—there’s been a long, deliberate project since at least 1965 to stifle, co-opt, or destroy the student movements and labor unions. By the late 1980s, trade unionism in Kenya had been either killed off or completely corrupted. And in 2018, the state effectively finished off student politics. A new law passed that year imposed a legal framework which rendered student unions obsolete. There is now no meaningful platform for student political organizing.

So we’re in a place where there’s no space to project radical ideas or agitate for reform. And this is part of a broader collapse. The late political economist Thandika Mkandawire referred to structural adjustment programs as Africa’s Great Depression. They didn’t just depress economies—they destroyed universities, gutted the health and education sectors, wiped out unions, and decimated productive labor.

If there’s no labor, there’s no need for labor unions. And in Kenya, that’s precisely what’s happened. The elite’s model of economic growth is based almost entirely on the service sector or on procurement—buying and selling, importing and exporting. Kenya is essentially becoming a logistics company. And in that setup, labor has shrunk significantly. What remains is muzzled or stifled.

Now, we’re entering another wave of austerity—one that’s arguably even more brutal. The health sector is on its knees. This is the last year Kenya will offer free primary education. We’re approaching a point where the only function of the state is its monopoly on violence.

That’s the context Gen Z finds themselves in. Everything that came before has been destroyed or rendered hollow. They’re pushing for a complete social contract—a new reality altogether. But the state is not only unwilling, it’s fundamentally unable to lead us into that new imagination. That’s what makes this such a painful and profound moment.

Just to quickly follow up on that—it’s a really helpful response. But there’s a sense in which the story we’ve been telling is quite urban. What about the countryside? Is this Gen Z phenomenon also happening outside the cities? How do the dynamics shift in rural areas?

One thing I’ve been thinking about—in the Nigerian context, at least—is how structural adjustment is once again reshaping the political economy. Our currency’s been re-liberalized, major subsidies have been removed. And just like in the 1980s, one of the justifications is that agricultural produce will become more expensive, so farmers will finally benefit. It’s framed as a kind of rebalancing in favor of the rural economy. It didn’t really pan out in the ’80s, but now it looks like that dynamic might be unfolding again.

So two things. First: What’s happening in terms of reform demands or social contract agitation in the countryside? Is Gen Z rural as well, or is this mostly urban? And second: We had a really eye-opening conversation yesterday with a smallholder farmer. It got me wondering—how politically vocal or organized is the rural population in Kenya right now?

Because it kind of sounded like there’s a looming extinction of smallholder farming—or at least an elite desire to eliminate it. So is there political voice in the countryside? And if so, what are rural communities saying in this moment of transition?

Good question. Let me start with a few stats that help frame the issue. During last year’s Gen Z protests, 37 out of Kenya’s 47 counties participated actively. So it wasn’t just an urban phenomenon—it was national. Still, most of the dominant narratives came from urban areas, and that’s worth noting. But here’s the thing: Kenya is currently 32 percent urbanized. By 2050, it’s projected to reach 50 percent. Urbanization is growing at a rate of 4–6 percent per year. So we’re in the middle of a rapid, aggressive shift.

And because of devolution, this urbanization isn’t just happening in Nairobi, Mombasa, or Kisumu. We’re seeing secondary towns and smaller cities undergo major transformations. The effect is similar to what happened in the UK during the Industrial Revolution—except here, it’s happening without industry. People are moving out of agrarian areas into urban centers, not because of industrial job creation but because of services.

And the service sector is what’s really driving this. You see professionals—especially in logistics and transport—migrating to emerging towns. Kenya has effectively become a supply-chain economy. We’re moving things in and out, operating as a kind of logistics hub. So while the roots may be rural, the economic orientation is shifting toward urban, service-based production.

That said, the countryside hasn’t disappeared. And here we can return to a point made by the late Thandika Mkandawire. He argued that structural adjustment—the “Great African Depression”—weakened the state so thoroughly that it created openings for people outside the state to flourish, albeit in fragmented ways. That dynamic still holds in some rural areas.

Take, for example, today’s tea and milk farmers. Many of them are relatively happy right now. They’re making a living. But their voices don’t carry the same weight in national discourse. They’re not shaping the conversation. And their success is often precarious. It depends on selling raw, primary produce—milk, tea, etc.—without much value addition.

But once these farmers try to move higher up the value chain—say, producing yogurt instead of just milk—they encounter real barriers. That’s when they need to organize. And that’s where the structural obstacles re-emerge. They face entrenched actors who already control those markets and aren’t keen to share.

So it’s a mixed bag. Yes, there’s some prosperity in rural sectors. Yes, there’s potential for political voice. But there are also serious structural limits. And I think it’s important to hold all of these tensions together if we want to understand where Kenya is going, and what kind of political and economic process we’re really in.

My question brings us back to the media. You’ve talked about how Gen Z is deeply focused on pushing for a new philosophical social contract—really trying to articulate what they want from the state. And I assume that platforms like The Elephant are meant to help facilitate that kind of conversation. But you and I also had a side conversation earlier, where we talked about how media—especially independent media—is increasingly at the mercy of capital.

So, the places where these conversations should be happening—Africa Is a Country, The Elephant, and so many others—are also struggling. We’re trying to sustain an editorial mission while confronting harsh financial realities. We’re all trying to figure out how to prop up our institutions to keep the work going, without compromising the substance of what we’re trying to build.

So I’m wondering: Are there conversations happening within The Elephant—or more broadly in Kenya’s independent media—about how to maintain this kind of dialogue with Gen Z, while also surviving the constraints of the current media funding ecosystem? How are you thinking about that tension?

Yeah, that hits close to home—and painfully so. As a journalist, it’s a deeply personal question. Yes, those conversations are happening. We’re all trying to think our way out of this trap: How does the media imagine a different future for itself, given the context we’re in?

But I think the issue is bigger than The Elephant or Africa Is a Country. It’s a sector-wide, maybe even continent-wide, media question. One of Kenya’s veteran journalists, Philip Ochieng, wrote a book in the 1980s called I Accuse the Press. In it, he argued that African journalists must constantly ask themselves two questions. First: the technical know-how of journalism—how to write well, shoot well, edit well. But second, and more important: the technical know-why. That’s the philosophical and social understanding of your context. Why are you doing journalism? Who is it for? What work is it doing?

So the challenge isn’t just external. It’s also internal. Gen Z isn’t only demanding reform of the state—although that part is clear. We’ve agitated for that. We’ve passed a constitution. We’ve created commissions. We know what needs to change. But what they’re also demanding is reform of the entire edifice around the state. That includes the media.

So even those of us working in journalism have to go through a reform process. We sometimes call out the state for violating principles, but we’re not always upholding them ourselves. Take the two-thirds gender rule, for instance. How many media houses—including progressive ones—are actually implementing that in their staffing or leadership? We point fingers at others while ignoring the log in our own eye.

This is a philosophical reckoning. Every sector—media, civil society, academia—has to ask itself what role it plays in maintaining the status quo. Because Gen Z isn’t just protesting the government. They’re questioning the entire structure of the state, in its fullest sense. And that includes us.

We’ve seen this before. During the independence era, the civil contract being fought for was Africanization. That was the demand: black faces in positions of power. From the Mau Mau uprising through to the 1960s, the rallying cry was: Let’s take over the institutions. Civil society? Africanize it. Media? Africanize it. That was the social contract of that generation.

Today, the demand is different. It’s not just about representation—it’s about transformation. But we’re still stuck in old reflexes. Whenever there’s a crisis, everyone points at the executive: Government must fix this. And sure, in many African contexts, the executive is a huge part of the problem. But Gen Z isn’t just looking at the executive. They’re looking at the whole state apparatus. They’re looking at civil society. They’re looking at the media. And they’re asking hard questions.

Because, over time, many of our civil society institutions have adopted the very logics of the state they were meant to counter. People see that. They say: I went to that NGO for help, and it felt no different from dealing with a government department. That’s why the Gen Z generation doesn’t just want reform at the top. They want a reckoning across the board.

Thanks. This is related to the media conversation we’ve been having. Given the decline of Western donor funding, have you—or any other alternative media spaces—been exploring new funding models? And if so, what do those look like?

Also, around the Gen Z revolt: Who were the journalists, or even influencers, who captured that moment? Are there particular individuals or collectives emerging as the thought leaders or philosophers of this movement?

That’s a really good—and difficult—question. The conversation around funding models is a painful one across the media sector. It’s not just theoretical—it touches on people’s livelihoods, on entire careers. And to be very honest, it feels like we’re facing a kind of existential reckoning.

There’s this story I read years ago about the late apologist Ravi Zacharias. He was preaching in Russia after the fall of the Berlin Wall. After his sermon, an old general approached him and said, “I hear what you’re saying about Christianity. But I’ve believed in communism for the past fifty years. If I accept your idea, what do I do with my history?” That, to me, captures where the media is today. If we accept that we need to change—what do we do with our history? What happens to everything we built around the old model?

It’s not just about money—it’s about identity. If we’re going to reconfigure the media—how we report, what counts as news, what we define as analysis—especially in this age of AI, authoritarianism, and planetary crisis—then we need a deep reckoning. That’s where we are.

There are some experiments. Models of community journalism are emerging. Some are promising, others are still finding their footing. But the broader point is that this has to be a sector-wide philosophical and technical conversation. We need to ask both the technical know-how and the technical know-why of journalism today. Then we can start defining what kind of journalism we want to practice in the 21st century—in this era where, as Gramsci said, the old world is dying.

As for who captured the Gen Z revolt—there were definitely some standout platforms. Siasa Place is one of them. They’ve done phenomenal work in recent months, especially around civic education and protest coverage. The Elephant, of course, also engaged deeply with the movement.

But honestly, it wasn’t a moment that belonged to any single person. It wasn’t about a heroic journalist or a singular thinker. It was a collective moment. What’s emerging now is a whole new kind of thought leadership—diffuse, generational, decentralized.

I was at a recent cultural event and was genuinely taken aback by the level of political consciousness among Gen Zs. The way they talk about liberal democratic values, about rights and state power—it’s not academic to them. It’s a lived experience. And it’s not just the urban elite. Even young people in rural areas are part of this.

Part of it, I think, is the effect of smartphones. I remember reading an article in The New York Times about the sociology of the smartphone. It’s fundamentally altered how people become politically socialized. You talk to a Gen Z person in Nairobi or Eldoret, and you realize they have internalized a political vocabulary that, in the past, belonged to university professors or seasoned activists.

They have what they call “drunken lectures”—nights out that turn into intellectual debates. They go on walks in the park where they hold meditations on constitutional mutations. And these aren’t activists or academics—just regular graduates, engineers, students.

It’s a new phenomenon. In my view—and I say this sincerely—I don’t think Kenya has ever had a generation like this. A generation that flirts with ideas not as abstractions but as part of their everyday life. That’s why I keep returning to the metaphor of the French Revolution. It’s a kind of Jacobin moment. These young people believe in something. They believe in it deeply.

Sorry—can I ask a quick follow-up? Would you say this new consciousness you’ve been describing is limited to university graduates? Or is it more pervasive than that?

I’m thinking about what happened in South Africa just a decade ago, with #RhodesMustFall and #FeesMustFall. That felt like it was mostly confined to a particular kind of Black South African university student. It didn’t really infiltrate the broader public sphere, or reach young people beyond that space. But what you’re describing in Kenya—it sounds much more widespread.

Yeah, that’s a good and fair question. I’d say it’s very pervasive. It cuts across class and geography in a way that surprised even me. But I want to offer one important qualification: It’s not anti-capitalist. That’s key to understand.

When I try to interpret this moment, it feels like Gen Z is absorbing the incoherence—or complexity—of the current world order. It’s a multipolar moment. Their politics reflect that. So yes, their consciousness is liberal. It’s diverse. It’s deeply informed. But it’s not driven by a coherent anti-capitalist framework—not in the way we might have seen during #FeesMustFall or in older leftist movements.

That’s not to say there aren’t anti-capitalist elements in there—there absolutely are. But broadly speaking, I wouldn’t characterize this generation’s orientation as part of a “broad left.” What I see is a rejection of parochialism—a refusal of old tribal, ethno-political frameworks—and a turn toward something else. If I had to describe the dominant mood, I’d say it’s a push toward something like democratic capitalism. I know that term is blurry, but it feels close to what’s happening. It’s not a wholesale rejection of markets. It’s more like a demand that capitalism become accountable.

Yeah, and I think that’s where it becomes tangible. People are suddenly aware of these massive multinational corporations operating right around them. It’s not abstract anymore.

You’re literally watching the price of rice go up—and at the same time, you can see who is responsible for it. You can see the building that just went up. You know what’s inside it. You see the machine driving inequality, not just the effects of it. So the question becomes: How do I make that shiny new million-dollar building change what’s on my kitchen table?

Yeah, I completely agree. It’s not an anti-capitalist movement, strictly speaking. It’s more of a redistributive one. There’s a desire to participate—to be included—and to see fairer outcomes. So yes, there are strong progressive currents within it, no doubt. Gen Z is absolutely calling for a new social contract with the state.

As a journalist, I observe and analyze this. But as someone thinking philosophically, I worry. These kinds of movements often lead to one of three outcomes: co-option, corruption, or complete suppression. Have you read The Wretched of the Screen by Hito Steyerl or the Vincent Bevins book? There’s a deep concern that these openings can be quickly closed. But at the same time, I find this moment thrilling. We’ve never been here before—in Kenya or globally.

The late Samir Amin spoke about the “Great Awakening,” and I do think that within these contradictions, something genuinely new is stirring. It’s a mixed bag, though. And I think the more I reflect on it, the more I believe we need new paradigms—new philosophical lenses. Because we’re living in a multipolar world, and that, to me, signals the death of conventional left-right politics.

So how do we talk about ideology now? How do we understand political imagination in a world where China, Iran, Russia, Brazil, and others are all contending for influence—not just militarily or economically, but discursively?

The old binaries—East versus West, liberal versus authoritarian—don’t hold the same way anymore. I think it was Louis Althusser who said that our biggest challenge is that we’re still using ideological frames forged in the past to interpret the present. We need new tools for thinking about capital—because today, Western capital coexists with Chinese capital and Gulf capital, often in the same city block.

We’re in an age where we urgently need to develop new frameworks—beyond Marxist or neoliberal binaries—to understand who we are, what forces are shaping our societies, and what paths lie ahead.